


Where Fate Finds You

by irisbleufic



Category: Heroes (TV), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-28
Updated: 2007-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title's based on a snippet of Mohinder's voice-over at the end of "Seven Minutes to Midnight."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Fate Finds You

Charlie Andrews remembers two different versions of her death, but neither one of them clearly. The common denominators are a pounding headache and Hiro Nakamura, but neither one is helpful. She's dead, and she's sure of it: no one survives having their head cut open, and no one survives an advanced brain tumor, either.

Charlie opens her eyes and finds that the sense of pale gold light is no illusion. She's standing in the middle of a brightly-lit hall that's covered floor to ceiling in books—and what spaces on the floor are free are filled, too, leaving only the narrowest of haphazard aisles for walking. Something dark darts into her field of vision, flapping to rest on a nearby stack of books that's about as high as her shoulders.

"Who're you, then?" asks the raven, delicately tilting his head. "Has he gotten bored already?"

"Who?" Charlie asks, uncertain of whether she ought to answer the bird's question before she begins to ask her own. "And whoever he is, why would he be bored when he's got a library chock-full of such amazing stuff to read?"

The raven burst into a series of articulate squawks that sounded uncannily like laughter.

"Oho, boy, come quick! She's a clever one, this! Come and see!"

"I can see her perfectly _well_ , thank you," said a voice from behind Charlie that seemed as ageless as the crackling of pages. "Flap along, Matthew. My Lord will be wanting a word."

Vaguely, Charlie wondered what words he could possibly want for, but she kept the joke to herself.

The bird scoffed, shifting from one spindly leg to the other. "Will he, now?"

"If not now, very soon," said the man behind Charlie, finally stepping into full view, stooping a little and adjusting his spectacles as he examined her. "He must hear of her arrival."

"Excuse me, but, um—" Charlie paused, wondering if she even had the _right_ to be making demands, wherever the hell she was "—who _is_ this 'he,' and what does he want from me? Is it God? Is he gonna judge me now?" The words sounded completely absurd, and she knew it, but if her Bible-thumping friends were right and this _was_ Heaven, or maybe Heaven's waiting room, she didn't want to take any chances.

The bespectacled man chuckled, his tufts of white hair fluttering as the bird took off.

"Of course not, Charlie Andrews. Unless, of course, you'd _prefer_ to be judged, in which case there are a couple of…gentlemen, how shall I say it, down _below_ with whom I might have a word—"

"No, uh, that won't be necessary," Charlie reassured him, shaking her head quickly. "I'm fine just where I am—wherever that is, that…is." She shut her mouth and closed her eyes a fraction, fighting off tears. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be practicing her Japanese with Hiro, but those days felt like years ago. A lifetime ago. _Her_ lifetime, gone in a blink.

"You, my dear, are in the Dreaming," said the man, tugging a book off the pile on which Matthew had been standing in order to brush away a few feathers. "And my name is Lucien, librarian to the Lord of this realm."

"Who would that be, then, since you know so much?" Charlie wiped away a tear that had managed to escape her left eye, straightening up defiantly. "What if Charlie Andrews isn't really my name? What if you just think it is?"

Lucien gave a put-upon sigh and held the book out to her. "If you aren't Charlie Andrews, then this book, I presume, isn't actually yours?"

Charlie clapped one hand over her mouth, grabbing the book with the other. It was her Japanese phrasebook, exactly as she'd left it: a handful of pages dog-eared, the front cover slightly bent. "No," she said, defeated, giving in to tears. "This is mine. It was a gift."

Unexpectedly, Lucien patted her on the shoulder and withdrew a crisp white handkerchief from his breast pocket. For the first time, Charlie noticed that he was wearing something that looked stuck between Victorian-era and Jazz Age fashion. She accepted the handkerchief gratefully and blew her nose, opting to stuff it in her pocket instead of handing it back to Lucien. She flipped through the book, finding that still knew the contents of every page. _Some luck_ , she thought. _They don't seem to speak Japanese in this particular afterlife!_

"Can I keep my book?" she asked, timidly.

Lucien waved one spidery hand, already halfway down the crooked aisle and critically examining the shelves. Uncertain of what else to do, Charlie turned and trailed after him, letting her eyes follow the same path taken by his. Some of the titles, she recognized— _Where the Red Fern Grows_ , _The Glass Bead Game_ —but others were unfamiliar and somehow off, tickling at her hyperactive memory, daring it to run a trace. _The Complete Haiku of William Shakespeare_? What was Lucien—or, indeed, the owner of this library—playing at?

"I'm onto you," said Charlie, sharply. "Some of these books don't exist!"

Lucien paused, regarding her as if she'd sprouted a set of ears more impressive than Bottom's. "Indeed. I think you'll find that _most_ of these books don't exist—not in the world you've left behind, that is. Here, however, they're more than just realities. They're _alive_."

"And I'm not?" Charlie asked, fresh tears threatening to spill over. She hugged the phrasebook to her chest. _Hiro, come get me out of here! Stop time and fill this entire fucking library with paper cranes; show me this isn't happening. Show me this is a dream_.

"No," said Lucien, simply, and returned to scanning the shelves, ignoring Charlie once more.

"What am I supposed to _do_?" Charlie shouted after him, her voice echoing eerily off the marble walls and high-vaulted ceilings. "I don't know anybody here! I don't have anywhere to go! I don't even know if I belong—"

"All things," said Lucien, his voice little more than a whisper carried on the stones from where he stood ahead of her some dozen yards away, "in my Lord's presence belong."

"There's another thing," Charlie said, furious, letting her anger fuel her courage. "Whoever your 'Lord' is, he sure doesn't have what I would call good manners!"

On a whisper of wind, or perhaps the flutter of a thousand pages, a figure appeared before her that wasn't Lucien, or even Matthew the raven. The man's black eyes twinkled, bottomless, and his hand, which clasped hers, was whiter than salt-washed shell.

"Then forgive me," he said, and kissed the back of her hand. "Lucien, leave us," he called over his shoulder. The librarian bowed curtly, and then vanished behind a tall stack of books. Charlie bit her lip.

"I didn't mean to insult you," she said. "I mean, if you're—" _Who are you? Why don't I know who you are? I know everything under the sun except your face!_

"I never meant to start us off on the wrong foot," said the man, letting go of her hand. Unhurried, he snapped his fingers in mid-air. The raven darted in through a high, arched window, which Charlie hadn't noticed before.

"You called?" asked Matthew, alighting on the pale man's outstretched finger.

"Show Miss Andrews to her room. See to it that Lucien delivers any books that she might wish."

"Yes, sir," said Matthew, looking as smug as it was possible for a bird to look, and flitted away.

Charlie stared at the floor, the books, the walls—but no matter where she looked, the man's dark, unblinking eyes glinted as he smiled at her. "I, um, don't know what to call you, sir. Your librarian—Lucien, I mean, he—wouldn't tell me."

"He has strangely formal ideas, there's no question," said the man, running both hands through his hair, which was as fair as his skin. "You can call me Daniel."

Charlie took a deep breath and inclined her head. "Well, Lord Daniel, I—"

" _Just_ Daniel," he said, and his eyes lit on the book in Charlie's hands. "You should have mentioned your vacation plans. Shall we go?"

"What, now?" Charlie asked. "You mean to Japan? They let dead people go on vacation?" As far as she was concerned, the entire situation had gone completely 'round the bend. If death was one long, absurd sequence of dreams spun out like the tales in _Arabian Nights_ , then maybe everything Hamlet had to say _was_ true.

"You're much more than a dead person, Charlie Andrews," said Daniel.

Charlie blushed and glanced at her feet again, uncertain of how to respond. That white hand took hers again, shimmering in the strange daylight. "What am I, then?"

"My guest and traveling companion," Daniel said, almost shrugging. "If you wish."

Charlie looked up at him and saw that his elegant robes, before nondescript, had become full, traditional Japanese regalia. She grinned in spite of herself. If this was what Hiro had given her to take into the beyond, it couldn't be any worse than the life she'd left behind.

" _Hai_ ," she said, simply, squeezing his long fingers. " _Arigato gozaimasu_!"


End file.
